A description of this section simply provides background information regarding embodiments set forth herein and should not be understood to form the related art.
With the advancement of computer network technologies, an existing computing environment depending on independent hardware performance of each terminal has evolved into a form of cloud computing providing a service using all computing resources in a network according to a request from a terminal.
Cloud computing may be defined as an ‘on-demand outsourcing service of computing resources’, provided via an information communication network such as the Internet. In a cloud computing environment, a service provider provides users with desired services by integrating data centers dispersed over several locations through virtualization technology. A user of a service may select and use desired services in a virtual space generated through the virtualization technology at a desired time rather than installing and using computing resources in a terminal belonging to the user.
According to the cloud computing, a user may access a cloud network through a terminal capable of performing only a network access function and a basic arithmetic function to perform works which need a large-capacity storage device and high-performance computing resources and receive various services.
A cloud streaming service is a streaming service based on such a cloud computing environment, whereby a server may execute content using server resources, captures and encodes an execution result screen, and transmits the encoded execution result screen to a terminal, and the terminal may decode and display the encoded execution result screen. Thus, a user may use content requiring high-performance computing resources regardless of the specifications of the terminal.
FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating a browser assignment structure of a conventional cloud streaming system which provides a cloud computing-based web browsing service.
Referring to FIG. 1, the conventional cloud streaming system assigns one of browsers to each of terminals.
Each of the browsers displays a current screen of the terminal corresponding thereto. When an input is received from the terminal, the screen is changed as the input is transferred to the browser assigned to the terminal, and is rendered, captured, encoded, and transmitted to the terminal.
According to an existing method described above, even if the same screen is viewed by users of the respective terminals, different browsers are assigned to the users and thus the number of peak concurrent connected users which may be supported by the cloud streaming system is limited to the number of browsers to be concurrently executed. Thus, even if the same input is received from the terminals, an output screen corresponding to the input is rendered, captured, and encoded each time the input is received and thus consumption of server resources increases.